Pompeo has refused to explain why he asked Trump to fire the State Department inspector general, but it’s no mystery: Linick was investigating Pompeo’s history of potentially illegal behavior and misuse of taxpayer funds.
Pompeo refused to say why he made the recommendation to fire State Department IG Steve Linick.
POMPEO: “In this case, I recommended to the President that Steve Linick be terminated. I frankly should have done it some time ago.”
QUESTION: “You have said, sir, that Mr. Linick was ‘undermining’ the department’s mission. What exactly does that mean? Can you give us examples? Even the President doesn’t know what that means. He says he didn’t really know much about it before you mentioned it. So what specifically has Mr. Linick done?”
POMPEO: “Yeah. Yeah, unlike others, I don’t talk about personnel matters. I don’t leak to you all, and I’ll just say this: I can’t give you specificity. We’ll share with the appropriate people the rationale.”
Just before he was fired, Linick made an inquiry into Pompeo’s misuse of taxpayer funds for elaborate dinners with Republican politicians and donors.
NBC News: “State Department officials involved in the dinners said they had raised concerns internally that the events were essentially using federal resources to cultivate a donor and supporter base for Pompeo’s political ambitions — complete with extensive contact information that gets sent back to Susan Pompeo’s personal email address.”
Linick was also investigating Pompeo for abuse of power for using government staff to complete personal errands.
NBC News: “The State Department inspector general who was removed from his job Friday was looking into whether Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made a staffer walk his dog, pick up his dry cleaning and make dinner reservations for Pompeo and his wife.”
And Linick was concluding an investigation into the Trump administration’s possibly illegal circumvention of Congress to sell weapons to Saudi Arabia.
New York Times: “The State Department inspector general fired by President Trump on Friday was in the final stages of an investigation into whether the administration had unlawfully declared an ‘emergency’ last year to allow the resumption of weapons sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates for their air war in Yemen.”
Aaaaand, Pompeo certainly did know about the last one which he said he didn’t (“someone walked my dog to sell arms to my dry cleaner” hahaha.”) because he answered written questions about the Saudi arms sale:
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declined an interview request for the State Department inspector general’s inquiry into whether the Trump administration acted illegally in declaring an “emergency” to bypass a congressional freeze on arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, according to three people with knowledge of his actions.
Mr. Pompeo chose instead to answer written questions from investigators working for the inspector general, Steve A. Linick, who was fired by President Trump on Friday.
That indicates that the secretary of state was aware of Mr. Linick’s investigation and the specific lines of questioning about Mr. Pompeo’s decision last year to resume the sales of bombs and other weapons, which had been stalled since 2017. Saudi Arabia has led Persian Gulf nations in an air war in Yemen that has resulted in large numbers of civilian deaths.
Pompeo and his wife are quite the little aristocrats running the State Department like their personal fiefdom and donor outreach group for the 2024 presidential campaign — at taxpayer expense.
And the Saudi arms sale is dirty on the same level that the arms to Iran were dirty during the Reagan administration. Maybe someone needs to look into what they’ve done with the money. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were doing an “Iran-Contra for Dummies” and they sent the money to that sad sack who tried to invade Venezuela a couple of weeks ago.
God help us if Mike Pompeo ever become president. He has the worst attributes of every corrupt, undemocratic, demagogic, GOP president in the modern era. There have been a bunch of them. He’s not as dumb as Trump but he’s just as self-serving and unethical.